Pre-Law Curricula
Pre-Law Advisor: Dr. Michael A. Kelley, Social Sciences
Office: 417 Russ Hall
Telephone: 620-235-4324
email: mkelley@pittstate.edu
Law schools, unlike medical or some other professional schools, do not require any particular degree or course of study for admission. Each applicant is required to have completed only a bachelor's degree and the Law School Admission Test (LSAT). Someone who is interested in pre-law at Pittsburg State University may choose any field in which to complete a baccalaureate degree. However, prospective law students should possess three basic qualities, which should be developed and amplified by their major/minor during their matriculation at the university:
• Skill in the comprehension and use of language. Language is the lawyer's working tool. In seeking to convince, in drafting legal instruments and legislation, and in oral and written arguments, a lawyer must have the capacity to communicate with clarity, precision, and persuasiveness. A program of study which requires one to write is, therefore, essential.
• Analytical and problem-solving skills. An important part of a lawyer's work is problem solving, which demands creative and analytical thinking. Any pre-law curriculum should, therefore, foster student development of research skills, use of facts, deductive and inductive reasoning, critical concepts and logic, and the systematic formation of principles and concepts.
• An understanding and interest in human institutions and values. Lawyers are not just engaged in a process like that of an assembly line worker; rather, they are forces in the actual operation and shaping of the institutions and values with which humankind is concerned. The work lawyers do can have a tremendous impact on the lives of both individuals and the broader community. A broad background in politics, history, philosophy, economics, and the arts is, therefore, quite important.
The political science major provides students with a pre-law emphasis area. The emphasis area allows students not only to develop the requisite skills necessary to law school success but also will expose them to the "Socratic" approach to learning employed at most law schools. |
